Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a sporting apparatus and, in particular, to a sporting apparatus having a modulation unit for controlling the rotation speed.
Related Art
More and more people are busy in their works and social activities, so they do not have time to do exercise. Consequently, many kinds of sporting apparatuses are invented for these busy people. For example, a running machine 1 as shown in FIG. 1A allows the user to do running exercise anytime and anywhere.
The running machine 1 includes a motor 11 and an endless belt 12. The motor 11 can drive the endless belt 12 to rotate, so that the user can run on the rotating endless belt 12. This allows the user to work out at home or gym.
However, the running machine 1 must be powered on to enable the motor 11 to drive the endless belt 12 to rotate, and the running machine 1 is high power consumption. In addition, when the rotation speed of the endless belt 12 is set already, the user can only passively run following the set rotation speed of the endless belt 12. Since the running machine 1 can not adjust the rotation speed of the endless belt 12 according to the position of the user on the endless belt 12, the user may fall down and get hurt if the running speed of the user does not compete with the rotation speed of the endless belt 12.
FIG. 1B shows a running machine disclosed by Jae-sang Park in US Patent Publication No. US20100210418 A1. The running machine of FIG. 1B utilizes a mechanical adjustment to change the rotation speed of the endless belt. For example, when the user 1000 runs too fast or too slow so as to position in front of or behind the reference position X0 of the belt 5000, the exerciser detecting portion 3000 of the running machine can detects the variation (X0, Xr, ΔX) of the positions of the user on the belt. Then, the signal of the position variation is transmitted to the control portion 7000 as shown in FIG. 1C. The control portion 7000 outputs a control signal according to the position variation to control the motor driving portion 6000 to further adjust the power supply portion 2500 to increase or decrease the rotation speed of the driving motor 4000, thereby changing the rotation speed of the belt 5000.
However, this mechanical control mechanism for directly increasing or decreasing the rotation speed of the motor by controlling the power supply portion has longer response time in controlling the rotation speed of the belt. In other words, this control mechanism has a drawback of poor response speed to the position variation of the user. Besides, the running machine disclosed by Park only performs the electricity generation function as the rotation speed of the motor decreases, and the electricity generation function of the running machine does not work in other situations.
Therefore, it is a subject of the invention to provide a sporting apparatus and a control method thereof that do not need the external power for driving, is capable of continuously performing the electricity generation function to function as an electricity generator, and can adjust the rotation speed of the endless belt with shorter response time according to the position of the user on the endless belt so as to prevent the user from getting hurt.